Maryland’s Great Change (Frederick, Clinton: crime, neighborhood, school districts)

[ArcticH]

Both Montgomery County and PG county have proposed a plan for the removal of school resource officers, both with strong support, https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesd...urce-officers/
https://www.capitalgazette.com/educa...?outputType=am
obviously this idea will cause mayhem in public schools but would it be severe enough to provoke a “flight” from Montgomery county, or an increase in private school enrollment?

[bufflove]

SROs have only been in MCPS for 15 years or so, in response to school shootings. It's silly to think "mayhem" will ensue if schools go back to only having regular security guards or that parents will shell out $20K a year to go to a private school which - wait for it - just have regular security guards.

[908Boi]

School resource officers have nothing to do with educating children.
If you think removing these people from schools will cause mayhem, you have a low IQ.

[G1..]

??? great ??, how .why?

[G1..]

Originally Posted by shiftymh

If your school has any sort of black population, you will not want these officers removed. It will result in 30 on 1 beat downs.

.........they will learn.

[ArcticH]

Originally Posted by shiftymh

If your school has any sort of black population, you will not want these officers removed. It will result in 30 on 1 beat downs.

rip to all the kids in moco,

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by 908Boi

School resource officers have nothing to do with educating children.
If you think removing these people from schools will cause mayhem, you have a low IQ.

No one, except those who don't want them, ever said they did. The Cops in Schools grants enacted in 1994 or so by the Clinton Administration were part of his larger Hot Spots initiative and were in response to a rising level of violence in, primarily, urban schools. They had nothing to do with school shootings.

One good thing about SROs, at least in Maryland, is that they will arrest students when they have to instead of letting things go like administrators often do. When a staff member has to file assault charges him or herself because the Principal doesn't want to mess up his suspension numbers there is an issue.

[Mutiny77]

I guess I'm officially old because the concept of SROs is altogether foreign to me as we didn't have them when I was in school. Then again, I grew up in the small town/rural South too.

[LynchburgLover]

Originally Posted by bufflove

SROs have only been in MCPS for 15 years or so, in response to school shootings. It's silly to think "mayhem" will ensue if schools go back to only having regular security guards or that parents will shell out $20K a year to go to a private school which - wait for it - just have regular security guards.

Good luck finding a private school in Montgomery County for $20k a year. The schools my kids went to in the 1990s are now — Bullis $47k, St. Andrews $44k and Christ Episcopal (k-8th grade) $21k.

Even the Academy of the Holy Cross (“affordable” Catholic) is $28k

And those aren’t the “high-end” ones.

All this will do is increase the flight to Howard and Frederick Counties

[selhars]

I don’t see the problem with having an SRO in the school.

The officers are there to enforce some kind of civility and behavior compliance. I wouldn’t send my kid to a public school that didn’t have SROs. To me it’s no different from having state police on the highway to enforce speed limits, or police patrolling the neighborhood to prevent crime. Like it or not--crimes happen in school and you need officers there to respond to that and prevent that. I don’t understand why people don’t get that.

And no, it’s not just urban or poor school districts where crimes happen in school. There have been some very well off school district where students are running drug rings. So let’s stop acting like only crime happens in minority or poor performing schools.

Those officers are in schools to make sure or help ensure that when there is an incident there is an a more immediate response. There’s no doubt in SRO can get to an incident faster than calling police who have to come from a station or another neighborhood.

If your kid is a good student, behaves, does his homework, and is not a troublemaker, then why should I bother him that there’s an SRO in the school. See him in the hallway and keep on walking. But if there are also kids in that school that are troublemakers and disturbing the environment so that other children cannot learn and have teachers afraid to do any kind of discipline… Well someone has to do it.

Things happen quickly in schools, and the more immediate response you have the better.